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The first three words of the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, WE THE PEOPLE, are capitalized and written larger than the others for they contain the idea of self-government. The Constitution’s beginning phrase presupposes the belief set forth in the Declaration of Independence that liberty is an unalienable right and gift from man’s Creator that cannot be bestowed by other men or governments.

The men who signed the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Constitution, and openly rebelled against a tyrannical monarch and his governing elites believed in a God-given right to individual liberty and a representative government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Similarly, the grassroots Americans in today’s tea party movement want to secure liberty, curtail the power of a central government, and cast off the tyranny of a ruling elite. The tea parties that sprang up across the nation last year were clarion calls to the leaders of the republic to honor the founding principles in the Declaration of Independence and uphold the Constitution as originally conceived, and to do battle with the statist progressive enemy which now threatens our republic.

However, a feud has erupted among tea party activists. They have become increasingly divided on how to fight America’s new tyrannical nemesis. Should tea partiers start another political party to shape policy and elections at local, state, and national levels, or do they join the Republican Party or a third party in an attempt to change the current direction of the country?

The individual’s right of free association, which has served American society so very well, has always permitted ignorant or wicked people to unite in ways that threaten individual liberty. People who contend that real liberty derives from membership in a just and good collective are statists. Statists advocate and promote the decisive use of state power through a foreign notion of collective liberty that looks to a governing elite as the beneficent arbiters of a superior society. They believe such arbiters know best and will determine the good and how best to pursue that good for the personal happiness of the common man.

America’s Founders knew such aristocratic, autocratic elitism leads to tyranny and serfdom, so they devised the Constitution to protect individual liberty and to limit the power of federal officeholders whose ambition is to rule rather than serve. Today far too many political and civic leaders as well as their sycophants in the media, academia, and the judiciary have subverted the principles of liberty outlined in the Constitution and embraced and promoted a statist progressive notion of collective liberty.

Historically, Americans have understood that individual liberty means the freedom to act according to one’s moral sense of right and wrong and to associate and trade freely with others to produce or to acquire goods and services that are necessary for one’s pursuit of happiness. But over the decades, statist progressives have gradually shifted the power from the American electorate to a centralized government by legislating and adjudicating issues of individual liberty at the federal level, rather than at the state and local levels.

Statist progressives posit that a collectivist mindset is necessary for “progress” and accordingly deem all political ideologies that emphasize the pre-eminence of individual liberty to be inherently regressive, thereby consigning them to the ash heap of history. Instead of protecting and defending the Constitution, statist progressives continually and deliberately subvert the very idea of the American Republic. They are radicals who strive to expand federal power, bypass constitutional limitations, pressure government officials to violate their oaths of office, and seek to subordinate the American people to supranational governance in service of a greater collective.

The tea party movements signify that the Spirit of ’76 has awakened for many Americans who are now raising their voices to preserve their birthright and to challenge the statist progressives’ radical view of liberty and the apologists who uncritically defend it.

Even though progressive statists are in a minority in the United States, they rule the Democrat Party and control the leadership of the House, Senate, and Presidency. If tea partiers remain divided against this common enemy, attempts to save the Republic will fail miserably and the country will fall inexorably to ruin in the clutches of elitist tyrants and one-party rule. Edmund Burke’s advice is as sound today as it was some 200 years ago.

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Rest assured the Spirit of ’76 is not dead; it is only slumbering. As Thomas Jefferson aptly noted, “[T]he body of the American people is substantially republican.” And so it remains to this day, which means it is not nor has it ever been socialist.

However, if tea partiers decide to support a new political party or third party candidates, their votes will be divided to allow the abominable statist progressive monster to remain in power and grow even larger and more menacing.

Let history record that in 2010 WE THE PEOPLE corrected the direction of the United States and began the restoration of the Republic, which stands under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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The American culture was fashioned almost 400 years ago when a small band of pilgrims settled in New England and each had no other choice but to do their own thing, watching out for not only their interests, but that of their families and close community. They formed local government close, within a day’s horseback ride, as the county. They elected people to make proper laws, enforce them, judge and punish lawbreakers. They held town hall meetings to reshape it when needed, and even vigilantes if government became abusive. The Tea Party movement is just an extension of that. Obama wants to change America from that culture, saying community interests are more important than are individual interests, yet individual self-interest and pebble-dropping was what made America great and prosperous. See Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity on calysamerica.com